Don't touch that! Not with your hands, not with your mouth. Not if it's someone else's, and no, not even if it's your own.
These are hardly the lessons Ruth Ramsey wants to pass on to her high school students, but such are the responsibilities of "The Abstinence Teacher." Ruth is the sex ed teacher in Stonewood Heights, which was once a typical affluent, blue-state suburb, full of educated parents, SUVs and Subarus, latte shops and well-attended soccer games. When a storefront evangelical church opens and makes ineffective sallies against Judy Blume books, evolution and "Happy Holidays" banners, Ruth finds it mildly amusing. Then she becomes a target by answering a question in class about oral sex in decidedly unsqueamish, Latin terms, concluding, "Some people enjoy it." To ward off unwanted media attention, the town institutes a chaste curriculum. Ruth, a divorced, low-key mother of two, surrenders without a fight: She makes a public apology and agrees to teach abstinence, abandoning her credo "Pleasure Is Good, Shame Is Bad, and Knowledge Is Power."
Tom Perrotta ("Little Children," "Election") brings this world to life with a few strokes. He never condescends to modern suburbia -- instead, he mucks around its corners, opens closets and reveals oddball secrets. It's a kind, gentle satire -- one that gives equal time to its villains and its heroes. The evangelical pastor, for instance, believes he's doing the right thing, even when he shows up uninvited on a parishioner's doorstep to shield him from sin.
The sinner in his sights is Tim Mason, a reformed bad boy. Tim finds genuine solace in Jesus, has married a sweet Christian girl from church and doesn't stray from the path -- except he can't quite give up listening to the Grateful Dead. As we learn in one of the book's long flashback sequences, Tim's first career choice (rock 'n' roll) and his first marriage (to a knockout) ended in a mess of too much booze and cocaine. Now clean, he's got a regular gig as a mortgage broker and maintains a relationship with his ex-wife -- who remarried up -- and their daughter, Abby. He even coaches Abby's soccer team; he's good at it, and the girls -- Ruth's daughter included -- love him. It's at a soccer match that Ruth meets Tim:
